By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer

According to two key bishops at the biannual meeting of U.S. Bishops this week, the University of Notre Dame will receive no sanctions for honoring pro-abortion President Barack Obama at its May 17 commencement ceremony this year.

According to the National Catholic Reporter, Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, vice president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, confirmed that Notre Dame would not be sanctioned for the invitation that caused a firestorm in the U.S. Catholic community.

Bishop Kicanas was asked if a university deliberately defies the bishops’ guidelines which prohibit Catholic institutions from giving platforms or honors to public figures whose position defy Church teaching, shouldn’t there be consequences?

He responded: “You used the phrase ‘deliberately defied.’ I think that’s a pretty harsh statement. If that’s actually what they did, I think Bishop D’Arcy (the bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana) would feel affronted.”

But “how else would you read it?” the bishop was asked. 

”I don’t know. That’s a judgment, that they ‘deliberately defied’ the bishops. They may have interpreted the document differently. … The first thing is to be sure of what we are indeed saying, what we’re agreeing to, and then bringing that to the institutions within one’s own diocese. It is a dialogic thing.

”Ultimately, I suppose, if someone is defiantly standing against what the church teaches, a bishop would have to take some steps … i[f] they’re claiming to be Catholic, but defiantly opposing what the magisterium is saying is important in terms of our teaching. I think as bishops we have to understand exactly what we were saying, and then the local bishop has to decide how that gets played out in his own diocese.”

Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry of Los Angeles, chairman of the Committee on Catholic Education, also said there would be no ecclesiastical discipline of the University of Notre Dame.

When asked if there was any push at the bishops’ meeting for such measures against Notre Dame, Bishop Curry said, “No, I don’t find any general consensus about that at all. Quite the contrary.

“I can’t speak for everybody, and certainly some people feel angry and betrayed, but I don’t find that that’s a consensus, either on our committee or among anyone else.”

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